Gambling Commission Hits Out Over Unlicensed Sports Sponsorships

The Gambling Commission, which is the UK’s regulator for the industry, has told iGaming suppliers it will not accept games being licensed to black market operators.

UKGC has also hit out at sports teams, including a handful of Premier League clubs, that have a gambling-related sponsor that does not have a licence to operate in that country.

The Gambling Commission is stepping up its regulatory action in a bid to gain a closer control of the industry, with moves including new slot stake limit at online casino sites introduced.

But there remains a lot of work to do at the regulator, which says it will no longer be giving out warnings to game companies that allow their titles to be playable on black market sites.

Companies such as Evolution are among those currently under investigation over the issue.

Evolution has been accused of supplying games to black market gambling sites, with its rival Playtech having commissioned the infamous Black Cube report over the matter.

Rhodes: There Are No Excuses

Andrew Rhodes, who is the chief executive of the Gambling Commission, repeated the body’s stance that companies have to do due diligence on their iGaming partners.

A series of slots studios and related iGaming companies have been caught out for allowing their titles to be played at unlicensed and unregulated sites.

Speaking in the the Gambling Commission’s latest CEO Briefing, which took place last week, Rhodes said a zero-tolerance approach is now going to be taken by UKGC.

He said:

There are no excuses. We will not accept any excuses. And you should, as a sector, expect to see more enforcement action in the coming weeks and months.

We’ve been working on this area very actively and we don’t intend to stop.

A ruling on the Gambling Commission’s investigation into Evolution’s business practices is expected to be published by the regulator before the end of the year.

Football teams in the UK have been given another Gambling Commission warning.

Unlicensed Sports Sponsors In The Spotlight

The Premier League will soon ban gambling companies from being the main sponsor at clubs, with the current season the last one in which these deals will be allowed.

But for now, many teams playing in the competition have a gambling-related sponsor pictured front and centre on their shirts, even though many of the firms do not have a UK licence.

The Gambling Commission has regularly warned teams in this position to take action over the matter and Rhodes issued a further update.

He said:

The Commission thinks it is wrong that people are sponsoring football clubs who don’t have a licence in this country. We just think that is wrong.

But it is not necessarily automatically an infringement of the licensing objectives, because if they are not taking any traffic from Great Britain, it is difficult to see how that would be an infringement, but our analysis is demonstrating that it is not quite as clear cut as that.

Gambling companies based overseas often have white-label arrangements to allow them to operate in the UK market. But one such operator of these white-label betting sites – TGP Europe – pulled out of the UK earlier in the year after it was censured by the Gambling Commission.

That left a handful of Premier League football teams including Burnley featuring gambling companies on their shirts that have no legal and licensed presence in the UK market.